Silence and Sunlight
by JacksTortugaLass
Summary: Based on 2x20 Best Years of Your Life.


**Title: **Silence and Sunlight

**Summary: **Based around 2x20 "Best Years of Your Life"

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing. Nope, not even the earring in Penhall's left earlobe.

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He liked it best when he was busy. Then, nothing else would come to his mind. Just whatever he was doing would be the thoughts that were floating around and filling up the spaces, blocking out the other thoughts to keep them from coming forward. When it was busy, it was easier to put up his front.

Putting the key in the lock, he walked into his apartment and closing the door felt the all too soon weight of silence that greeted him.

He hated silence; he hated it even more than faking it all day long that everything was okay, that nothing was bothering him. In the silence, there was no place to hide, it wouldn't let you, and soon the thoughts that he had successfully kept back all daylong would come running to the foreground.

The routine would begin then, he would close his eyes, trying to keep them back, knowing each and every time he did that it never helped, but yet he did it anyway. After that, he would try to ignore the fact that he was crying. Running his sleeve across his eyes, and letting out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. Taking a few steps toward the bed, he would collapse onto it while the images and thoughts would go across his mind and he was forced to watch and remember.

All he would have to do is get through the night. Then in the morning, when he walked out that door, he wouldn't have to deal with it until he came back. As he stared at the ceiling he would think it an easy task to get through the silence filled night, but it never was. In a way, it was harder to do that than put his front up all day long.

The clock wasn't any help in this matter, only moving ahead one minute at a time each time he looked towards it. Even with his eyes open he couldn't get away from his mind, as he tried to read it would make the words form into his past and not what was really printed.

He had always been alone. As a child he had been forced to grow up pretty fast. Maybe that was why now, when he was older, he acted out his childhood, always making jokes and smiling. Or maybe that was just another part of his front. He couldn't tell what was real or what wasn't anymore. He couldn't remember a smile that actually felt real.

Staring at the ceiling he would stay that way until the faint rays of sunlight would go across the ceiling. The next thing he knew he would be awoken by the alarm clock and it was time for another day.

The silence still hung around while he got ready for the day but as soon as he stepped out the door, he knew it wouldn't follow him. It couldn't handle the outside. It couldn't handle the quips and understanding looks from his co-workers. He knew that it would wait for him, and just like the day before and the day before that, Doug would tell himself that this was the last time that it would weigh him down. He would say that this was the final day and he would go on with his life.

And yet, in the back of his mind, he knew he was lying.

But one day, one day he would be able to move on from it all. And there, the sunlight would be.

Waiting for him.

Sunlight.

If there was one thing that he cherished more than anything else it was the sun's rays. After his mother had died, he would find himself sitting in the middle of his room, right in the middle of where the sun would be in the carpet, crying and wondering why she would never came to console him. He was young then, only six, and didn't understand what she had truly done. He thought she had become one with the sun. She had always loved turning all the lights out in favor of the sun lighting the room. Even now he would do the same, opting for the sun rather than add to his electric bill. As he got older, he still found himself waiting for her, especially at night. And especially when he was alone.

Shutting the door behind him, he started to walk down the hall wondering when he would decide, when he would become a bigger person by moving on. He knew why he couldn't, why he seemingly refused to get past it. He was afraid of letting her memory go, that if he did move on, she would as well.

But something happened that morning as he walked past his building and towards the chapel; slowly he began to understand everything. He understood what he had been doing all these years and as he looked into the sky, he felt it lift from his shoulders. Closing his eyes, he felt something he hadn't known he could feel in all those years: hope and peace.


End file.
